Lavengro in Spain

Air passenger duty

Every passenger departing from a British airport has to pay a tax called air passenger duty. It was introduced with the justification that air transport is bad for the environment and therefore (sic) had to be taxed. It has now gone up to £11 for a flight to Europe and will go up to £12 next year; premium tickets on long-haul flights will pay as much as £170. Despite this cosmetic attempt to make it progressive in terms of distance travelled, it is a very stupid tax.

Air transport is the preferred target of the Green Stalinists*, who like telling other people how to run their lives, and of the Green puritans**, who are appalled at the idea of people doing things that they enjoy. Needless to say, there are also Green Stalinist Puritans.

Darren Johnson, from the Green Party, said it was a good thing if people were discouraged from flying. "We need to be increasing the air passenger duty," he said. "Aviation is simply not paying its way in terms of the environmental damage it causes."

Cheap air travel has had a tremendously positive effect on mobility in Europe, enabling millions of people of all ages to travel to other countries for all sorts of reasons, not only the cliché of stag parties in Riga. Nor are these travellers the stinking rich businesspeople of popular Green mythology, jetting ceaselessly around to further their international conspiracy against the working class. They are mostly perfectly ordinary people travelling on holiday, or to meet friends or lovers, or for study, or yes indeed for professional or business purposes – and why not?

I do not deny that air transport produces greenhouse gases; it is an unarguable fact of basic chemistry that burning kerosene will do so. But the extent to which air transport is responsible for overall climate change, and the extent to which it should be taxed, is another matter. The airline industry, from plane-makers to airlines to airport management, is acutely aware of environmental matters. Modern planes, not to mention the ones that will be used in the future, are not only quieter than the older ones but they produce less greenhouse gas. As it happens, I live in a city, I work at home, I rarely travel outside the city, and when I do I use public transport as I do not own a car (or even a driving licence). When I am sternly lectured about how my occasional flights are damaging the planet, I find it rather irksome.

If air travel is to be taxed, and if everything else is there seems to be no reason to exempt it, please can we have a little common sense in the debate? The idea of taxing airline fuel is barmy and has rightly been resisted. There is one very basic fact about aeroplanes: they can move around very easily and very quickly. If the UK were to tax fuel, airlines would simply refuel their planes in airports in other countries. What should be done – and easyJet support this option – is that instead of crudely taxing passengers, the airlines should be taxed on each flight that they make, with variations in the tax for the age of the plane and the passenger load. With computer records that are kept nowadays it should be quite easy to say that a flight from Barcelona to Liverpool in a certain make of plane, of a certain age, with say a 93% passenger load, will use X tonnes of fuel. It might even be possible to include in the calculation the actual flight path distance (though a nominal one could easily be assigned for each route) or even the actual quantity of fuel used on each flight. This system would place the tax in the airline’s overall accounting system, thus getting away from the very obvious fact that the UK-origin leg of a return flight costs a lot more than the flight to the UK does (bad for the country’s image) and it would encourage airlines to be fuel efficient in their choice of aircraft and in their efforts to fill their planes. easyJet supports this because it uses new planes and manages to fill them almost to capacity on every flight. It is the less efficient airlines that oppose such a tax.

 

*It is not often realised that Stalinism is a Great British Invention, having been invented by one O. Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century.

** “The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” Thomas Macaulay

Paris day five

Monday 14 September

This was our last day. Attentive readers will have noticed that although we were in Versailles we hadn’t visited the palace. We had thought of doing it on Sunday and doing somewhere in the centre on Monday, with our luggage in tow. But that didn’t work out so we had Monday morning left. We have both been to the palace before, and on Mondays the actual building is closed. So, we decided that Jane would stay in the hotel and do the packing (as she always does) and pay the bill (which would be quite complicated as part of it had already been paid by OUSA), while I went to the palace, about ten minutes from the hotel, to walk around and take some photos.

Ahh, the photos. When I was in La Chat Qui Pêche the night before I had taken some photos. I hadn’t used the flash and had set the white balance on the camera for tungsten. Yes, well, I forgot to change it the following day when I was in daylight so that when I came to look at my photos of the Palace of Versailles I found that they were all bright blue! Hard work testing to the limits both Corel Paint Shop and my limited knowledge of colour photography achieved a considerable improvement but some of the results still look a bit odd, especially in the skies.

The Palace of Versailles was built by Louis XIV (the Sun King) and is a typical piece of nouveau-riche extravaganza. But with time it has acquired an aura and is really quite attractive, as well as being very, very impressive. In front of the palace there is a sculpture of a carriage and six racing across the courtyard. It may be purple (yes, the colour is right, more or less) and thoroughly modern in conception, but it gives an impression of speed and urgency that seems appropriate but that contrasts with the stately grandeur of the buildings around it. The golden Royal Railings (la Grille Royale) were built in 1679, destroyed in 1794, and replaced in 2008.

 

Carriage and six	The Sun King
The Royal Railings	The Palace

It may, perhaps, be useful to retell the real story about Marie Antoinette and that cake. At the time in France there was a law that said that bakers had to bake basic bread in fixed quantities and sell it at a fixed price by weight; if they had no basic bread, they had to offer other bread at the fixed price of the basic stuff. There was a similar law in force in Spain when I arrived, and for quite a few years afterwards every bakery had to display a notice to that effect. What happened in Paris was that when Marie Antoinette was told that the people had no bread, she said quite reasonably that they ought to be getting brioche (not cake) instead, and why weren’t they? But the political spin of the Revolution got to work and one of history’s most powerful urban myths was created.

The gardens are most beautiful and, like Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, they offer a beautiful and expansive garden near the city centre. On the morning that I was there there was a fresh breeze that was very pleasant indeed. The view over miles and miles of unspoilt countryside has to be seen to be believed, and the layout of the gardens has one interesting point. I have noticed that if my camera (Nikon D50) is on the 80mm focal length setting the view through the viewfinder is the same size as with the naked eye. More than that, though, the picture that the camera takes on that setting is roughly what the human eye sees as one view without moving. Fair enough, but I have noticed more than once that what I see through the viewfinder looks just right, it is the right size. And that means that the architect or designer has been able to visualise what will look right to the human eye in deciding on the size and scope of a particular feature. The two pictures below show the garden and the palace. They are taken from the obvious place to look around, the end of the upper part of the garden.

 

An eyeful of garden	An eyeful of palace
Garden with architects	Nouveau-riche kitsch

One curious thing in the gardens was a number of square pedestals with statues on them. These are labelled ‘The Architects’ and are portraits of the architects who worked on the restoration of the palace.

Then it was lunchtime. I rarely eat much at lunchtime and hardly ever drink alcohol then, especially before a flight, but the gigot and burgundy at Le Limousin were calling. We met there at 12.00 and had a good lunch before going to the airport.

At Versailles station there are no barriers and the machine in which you ‘composter’ your ticket was out of order. No problem, we just got on the train, changed at St Michel and went on to CDG airport. However, there was a barrier there to get out of the station and into the terminal, and our tickets wouldn’t work it. The barrier consists of a metal machine that processes tickets and a couple of glass doors that open to let passengers through. There was no official presence, not even a telephone, to provide help. In the end, some more people came and we followed along straight after them through the barrier. Jane got through and I was just through when – BANG – the doors closed behind me trapping my suitcase on the station side of the barrier. What could we do? In fact, the doors do not close so as to meet. There is a space of a few centimetres and through this I was able to heave my suitcase – a big one weighing more than 20 kg – up on to the metal side piece, where the people with us all piled in to help bring it over into the airport terminal side. Of course they had seen what we had done and how the case came to be trapped, but they were Italians so they weren’t in the slightest worried about that sort of thing.

We checked in and as usual went through security. Our idea is that we get as far as possible through an airport and then settle down to wait. What we didn’t know was that at Charles de Gaulle the airside waiting area has no facilities at all, not even a drinks machine: the shops, toilets, restaurants etc. are all landside. We had found the same at Vienna airport last year and although at first it is a little annoying if you aren’t expecting it, you can always go back through security. You have to take your boarding card with you and go through the security procedure when you come back, but if there are two people travelling you can take turns while one stays with the luggage. The advantage of this is that, unlike the farcical procedure in Spanish and British airports, the security system is coherent; the only people admitted airside who come into contact with passengers are airline employees and the security staff themselves. The holding areas are small and simple and can be cleaned under the supervision of the security people. Compare that with the vast armies of barmen, shop assistants, lavatory cleaners and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all who work airside in other airports, and of course the tonnes of stuff that they sell and consume there.

And so, back to Barcelona. The flight was fine.

Paris day four

Sunday 13 September

After breakfast we headed for the station to go to Montmartre. On a Sunday morning it was obviously going to be crowded but it was still pleasant to wander around watching the artists at work. We went up in the funicular (who wouldn’t?) and pottered around the Sacré Coeur. The weather was hazy and cloudy but we still enjoyed it. Just next to the vaguely Byzantine Sacré Coeur we found the Romanesque church of St Pierre de Montmartre. After crêpes for lunch we headed downwards. We were going to the Sainte Chapelle and the Place des Vosges, so we went down the steps to find the right metro line.

Sacré Coeur	Joan of Arc

Paris from Montmartre	St Pierre de Montmartre

The Sainte Chapelle is in the same complex as the Palais de Justice, so we had to go through a security procedure to be admitted. I didn’t know what to expect from what I learnt was the royal chapel in the medieval palace. What I found in the lower chapel (for the servants) was an extraordinary Gothic extravaganza in red, blue and gold, while the upper chapel, where the family worshipped has some stunning stained glass windows and other decorations. A large proportion of the glass, about 70% if memory serves, is original. Some restoration work has been done on the chapel as a whole, in fact it is not yet complete, and the overall effect is truly remarkable.

Lower chapel roof	Lower chapel apse

Upper chapel, inside of main door	Upper chapel windows and roof

As we left, I experienced an urgent need to perform an essential bodily function. The facilities in the chapel complex were out of order so we went to a bar directly opposite. I had remembered by this time that in Paris ‘one descends’ to the toilets (in Spain they are usually far in the back of a bar) but I was still astonished by what I found. To be perfectly honest, my days of squatting over a hole in the ground are over; such things were still to be found in cheaper bars in Barcelona when I arrived but I have not seen one for over twenty years. But, here was one in a thoroughly up-market establishment in a prime central location of Paris. We moved on. Investigation of another perfectly respectable establishment revealed the same horror, but in the end I found satisfaction. And to prove that every could has a silver lining, this was in a wonderful, quiet residential area called village St Paul, just off a main road. It had a lovely bar where we drank citron pressé.

Village St Paul	Jewish quarter in the Marais

Our plan for the afternoon was to walk through the Marais to the Place des Vosges. We did this, but our map was not as accurate as it might have been and reaching the Place turned out to be a matter of luck rather than judgement. Still, we found ourselves in a maze of old streets that included the Jewish quarter and got there eventually.

The story goes that Louis XIII promised to rename what was then the Place Royale after whichever province got its taxes to Paris first, and Vosges won the race. The square really is very big (the photo shows half of one side) and it is really square. It would be a fine place for a picnic on a leisurely afternoon.

Place des Vosges	Hôtel de Sully

We left the square by its southern side and found ourselves in the Hôtel de Sully. The Duc de Sully bought it because it was handy for the square.

From there we walked down to Île St Louis because we’d never been there, crossed to Île de la Cité again, passed Notre Dame, and went to Le Chat Qui Pêche for dinner. This is a good middle-range restaurant in that maze of streets that are all restaurants on the left bank opposite the cathedral. It’s nothing special but we like it and it is opposite a Greek restaurant with a tout outside who makes a whole cabaret of enticing people inside.

Gargoyles talking to each other	Le Chat Qui Pêche

After that, back to Versailles on the RER.

To be concluded.

Paris day three

Saturday 12 September

I have mentioned that we were in Paris for an OU degree ceremony. This was the day when it was to take place. Jane would be there all day, not only running the OUSA stall but also, as a member of the OUSA executive committee, taking part in the procession of dignitaries – and in full academic dress because she already has one OU degree.

This was all to happen in the Palais des Congrès, which is close to the hotel. I went in the morning to help put up the stall (one part of the operation is a lot easier if there is someone tall to do it) and then I was on my own for the day. I wanted to see la Défense. Jane had been there the year before, when she went to the degree ceremony without me, and I had seen her photos of it.

I walked for about a quarter of an hour across Versailles to the other RER station, a walk that took me through the middle of the market square and past some absolutely splendid-looking food shops of all kinds.

 

La Défense

La Défense is a modern commercial area to the west of Paris. It was controversial (naturally) when it was built, but Paris has kept really tall buildings out of the centre, and with the Eiffel Tower the argument against tall structures is bound to be a bit weak. La Défense can be seen looking west along the Champs Élysées behind the Arc de Triomphe at l’Étoile. Looking eastwards from la Défense gives the reverse view across to that arch, which is clearly visible; notice in the photo how the low sloping roof in front of the Arc de Triomphe is divided so as not to break the view of the arch. And at la Défense itself there is a huge square arch that mirrors the design.

 

Arc de Triomphe	Arche de la Défense

The buildings are big – there’s no getting away from that. But I was impressed by the way in which the form is managed to offer variety, and especially how the way in which the buildings reflect the sky and each other to give an appearance of lightness and depth rather than solidity and denseness. Overall, there is no feeling of oppressive height, a result of buildings, which are not all skyscrapers, being placed around a spacious central esplanade.

 

How to make	colossal buildings invisible

Leaving la Défense, which has a large shopping centre in the underground part, I took a metro into the city centre. Fortunately, my RER ticket opened the barrier; otherwise I don’t know what I would have done as there seemed to be nowhere selling metro tickets. I went to the Hôtel de Ville, where there was some sort of environmental exhibition going on in stalls set up as lovely little pointy tents of the sort you see in medieval paintings. From there I crossed to the Île de la Cité. I wanted to check whether Sainte Chapelle would be open on a Sunday (I had an idea that it was a functioning place of worship but it isn’t), and I wanted to find the entrance to St. Michel station that had a lift in case we wanted to spend Monday morning in the centre with our luggage.

 

Hôtel de Ville	Ste. Chapelle and Palais de Justice

I found Ste. Chapelle next to the Palais de Justice and then set off looking for this station. On the way I discovered that the statue of St Michael at the end of the boulevard is a war memorial, something I had never noticed before. In fact I had assumed that it was a lot older than that. After getting lost and ending up back at the Cluny Museum (wrong station) I found the elusive station with a lift, but it was out of order. Well, if it was out of order on a Saturday afternoon we were not going to risk it on Monday morning so that was that. I set off back to Versailles.

Travelling back and forth on the train I had noticed an area of new buildings in the area of Javel and Boulevard Victor Pont du Garigliano stations. I stopped off to have a look at them. Though nothing like la Défense, they were still interesting. It was a bit late, however, so my exploring was limited (and I was feeling just a little tired, I admit).

 

Javel station	Modern buildings
Georges Pompidou Hospital

Back in Versailles I got ready for dinner. There were a lot of OU people around that day and we set off for the restaurants which surround the market in Versailles (a logical place to find lots of good restaurants), where we split up into smaller groups, partly because the number of people was too great for any restaurant, and also to allow vegetarians, omnivores and other special tastes to find their own place. We ended up in the Ducis restaurant, which did us very well, and then we returned to our hotel.

PS. I prepare my blog posts in Windows Live Writer, which has its own idiosyncratic way of dealing with captions – it puts them any way it likes!

Paris day two

Friday 11 September

The Ibis does a good breakfast buffet, so we stocked up on the ham and cheese section in the hope of making do with a light lunch despite a hard day’s sightseeing. Then we set off for Paris.

After our adventures yesterday I wondered why I had not heard any signal that the train doors were about to close. As I sat on the RER I listened carefully and did hear what I might describe as a moderate humming noise before the doors closed. I suppose that it depends on what you expect but it is a far cry from the strident beep-beep-beeping of a Catalan train and is practically inaudible on a crowded rush-hour platform. Still we had arrived with our luggage – though if we had been travelling to the airport it might have been a different matter.

Inside the Rodin Museum	The Kiss

Our first destination in Paris was the Rodin Museum, a charming château with many works displayed in the garden. It was a fine day and as we walked around we heard not only a lot of Spanish but also quite a lot of Catalan being spoken. The eleventh of September is the national day of Catalonia and we were not the only people who had gone to Paris for the weekend.

The Burghers of Calais	The Gate of Hell

The museum itself was most interesting. The Burghers of Calais, are there with the Gate of Hell, the Thinker and the Kiss, which is displayed inside because it is of marble and would suffer in the rain. There are also statue portraits of real people, some of whom were only identified after Rodin’s death.

Not a man to meet on a dark night	The Thinker

After the Rodin museum we walked a considerable distance to the church of St Sulpice – yes, the one that features in The Da Vinci Code, though it seemed to be short on blind, albino, monk-assassins when we were there. It is neoclassical in design and they wanted to get their money’s worth in eclecticism: the main façade has all three main Greek column designs placed one above the other. Unfortunately, for us at least, the façade is being restored so we couldn’t see the real thing.

The façade	Looking up

On leaving the church we went to Les Deux Magots for refreshments. This is the place where Hemingway acquired his taste for Margaux. The magots are two Chinese figures that sit on the walls inside the restaurant. Cheap it certainly is not, but it is no worse than places on the Rambla in Barcelona and it is a very pleasant place to sit and watch the Boulevard Saint Germain.

 

Les deux magots

The afternoon was spent in the Musée du Moyen Âge, also known as the Cluny Museum and home to a splendid collection of medieval objects, from warfare to cooking and personal grooming. The building itself is an interesting example of Gothic architecture. The museum also houses the wonderful medieval tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn and exhibits dating from Roman times, and some statues showing that Louis XVIII was not the only King of France who lost his head in the Revolution. The bottom-right picture below shows a banner hanging on the wall. The lettering in the middle is, ahem, all Greek to me but I am sure that the Latin top and bottom says ‘golden mediocrity’. Can it be so? Can some Latin scholar help?

Cluny Museum	The chapel roof
Beheaded kings	Golden mediocrity?

And so back once again to our hotel in Versailles, where we met some other British people. The reason why we were in Versailles was that Jane was there for an Open University graduation ceremony. She was not graduating herself but was running the stall for the Students’ Association. Other OUSA bigwigs arrived on the Friday and we spent the evening with them. The general decision was to eat in the bar of the hotel. The waiter, our friend from the evening before, told us quite honestly that the bar food was from the freezer and reheated in a microwave, and that as he only had two microwaves he couldn’t serve six meals at the same time. We agreed and, well, I suppose that it saved going out, but a reheated hachette parmentière (shepherd’s pie) was not quite what I might have had in Le Limousin just round the corner.

To be continued …

Paris day one

Thursday 10 September

All went well with the easyJet flight from Barcelona to Charles de Gaulle airport, but that was when the problems began. After walking about a kilometre through the terminal to the RER (local railway) station we went to a machine to buy our tickets to the city centre. Jane put her Visa card in – and it was rejected. A bit odd, we thought so I gave her mine – and that was rejected too! This was worrying as the thought of being in Paris for a weekend with no functioning credit card was not pleasant. I went off to join the very long queue at the ticket office while Jane went to try another machine. After a considerable time she came back signalling victory. At first several machines had failed her but then she noticed something. All the cards that the French people were putting in had chips on them, but Spanish Visa cards don’t. Fortunately, we also have Visa Electron (debit) cards that do have chips. That solved the problem.

We went into town. We were actually staying in a hotel in Versailles so we changed at St Michel station to another line. On the platform we found an Australian couple consulting a map and wondering if the next train was for Versailles. We assured them that it was and waited with them. The train came. As it happened, it stopped leaving us at the middle of the carriage. We went to the door at the end and found ourselves behind several other people including the Australians, who had a lot of luggage. When they were on board, I hoisted my one suitcase (the big size that people use now that airlines charge per piece of baggage) on to the train and was about to get on myself when – BANG – the doors closed in my face. So there we were on the platform with our suitcase on a train heading for Versailles and a couple of horrified Australian faces staring at us through the window.

I found a platform attendant. Fortunately, they are placed about every ten metres along the platform of that busy station at rush hours, and I told him ‘Mon bagage est dans le train.’ Being French, he said ‘Ooh-la-la’ (yes really) and ran to a glass box that was the platform control office. After a few quick phone calls had been made – there was after all a security aspect to an ownerless suitcase being on a train – it was agreed that as we were going to the train’s destination of Versailles the case could stay on board and would be removed by railway staff from whom we would claim it. Breathing a sigh of relief, we boarded the next train fifteen minutes later.

The next stop is Musée d’Orsay. As the train stood in the station we saw a manic Australian face grimacing at us through the window and shouting ‘We’ve got yer case.’ I stood up and went to the door at the end of the carriage. Just as I got there to speak to the Australian – BANG – the doors closed in my face, and as the train started moving I heard him shouting ‘We’ll hand it in’. Jane and I discussed the situation and decided that we would both get out at the next station, she would wait on the platform there in case the Australians decided to bring it on, and I would return to Musée d’Orsay and try to find the case, either with the Australians or, though I was not at all sure that their French was up to explaining what had happened, in the custody of the station authorities.

I got to Musée d’Orsay and found the platform for Versailles. There were no Australians there and I waited for the next Versailles train to arrive and depart. I phoned Jane to say what had happened and found that the mobile phone coverage in the underground bit of the RER is distinctly flaky. Assuming, as they were not on the Versailles platform, that the Australians had left my case with the station office I headed for the exit. This took me to the other side of the platform, where – lo and behold! – I found the Australian couple sitting on my case. What had happened? I asked why they were not standing on the platform for Versailles. They told me that they were in fact only going to Musée d’Orsay, and had asked about Versailles as the destination for the train that they wanted, not as their own destination. They were waiting on the platform where they had got off our train, in case I did exactly what I had done. It turned out that trains to Versailles stop alternately at different sides of the platform. I thanked them profusely (while cursing them inwardly I must admit) because they had acted in good faith and had certainly tried to help. I phoned Jane again, got through on the second attempt, and arranged for us to meet up again on the next train to Versailles.

 

Station	Hôtel de ville

So we arrived in Versailles with our luggage and found the Hôtel Ibis, just five minutes’ walk from the station and opposite the splendid Hôtel de Ville (which is not a place to spend a night). The room was as adequate as one would expect in an Ibis. We unpacked and sorted ourselves out generally, and went down for a drink before dinner. We noticed that the bar service was a little erratic.

We had dinner in the splendid restaurant Le Limousin, which was just round the corner. They specialise in gigot, which is carved in the dining room, and have excellent wine at a reasonable price. We went back to the hotel and decided that we might have a nightcap. I ordered Poire Williams. The waiter (admittedly a trainee) had never heard of it. I showed it to him on the printed menu. ‘Ah, you mean the eau de vie,’ he said. Jane ordered calvados. The waiter returned with my drink and ‘Sorry, we have no calvados.’ Jane ordered a cognac. Five minutes later, back he came with ‘Sorry, we have no cognac.’ We suggested that it was rather unusual (!) for a bar in France to have no cognac. He agreed, ‘C’est incroyable. Mais,’ he added in a fit of honesty that wouldn’t do his traineeship much good if it were known ‘c’est l’Hôtel Ibis’. Jane ordered a Poire Williams, the same as me; when it arrived, I picked mine up to have a sip – and noticed a fly in it. ‘Waiter, waiter, there’s a fly in my eau de vie,’ I said. He looked at it, agreed that indeed there was, and took it away.

He came back with a clean glass and the bottle. As he was about to pour it, he had a thought. ‘I’ll just check the bottle in case they’re inside,’ he said. And sure enough, there were little black flecks floating around in it. This was obviously wrong so he took the bottle away to change it along with my glass. Then he came back to change Jane’s drink, which was clear but had come out of the same fly-ridden bottle. Then he brought two clean glasses and a new bottle. Finally, we got our drinks.

To be continued …